Latest news with #Vertgo

New Statesman​

Cinema's apex predator

Photo by Vertgo Releasing Jaws wasn't the first shark movie. (That's a 1969 adventure called Shark! directed by Sam Fuller and starring Burt Reynolds.) But it was Jaws, released 50 years ago this month, that effectively launched an entire genre as well as redefining the summer blockbuster. The form had such energy that it soon metamorphosed beyond sharks. Alien (1979) was pitched to studio executives as 'Jaws in space'. Films were made starring orcas, alligators, barracudas and, triumphantly, piranhas. Sharks themselves mutated mightily too. In Deep Blue Sea (1999), a super-intelligent mako eats Samuel L Jackson. In The Meg (2018), Jason Statham bests a monster revived from prehistory. In Sharknado (2013), sharks take over Los Angeles via tornados. In Under Paris (2024), they swarm the City of Light via the Seine and the catacombs. Some films have been genuinely scary. Open Water (2003), about a couple accidentally left behind mid ocean, based on a true story and produced on a tiny budget, is traumatising; The Shallows (2016), in which a great white takes against Blake Lively, stuck just 200 yards offshore, is thrilling. But there has also been a serious pushback against the shark-demonisation industry. Worldwide, fewer than ten people a year are killed by shark attack. In comparison, stepladders are a holy terror, toasters the pitiless enemy of all mankind. And, contrariwise, 100 million sharks yearly are killed and eaten, or otherwise consumed, as oil in cosmetics, for example. So we have long been overdue a correction, not perhaps a shark buddy movie, but one that allows us the full frisson while reminding us that people are worse. Dangerous Animals, a serial-killer/shark mash-up, is the third film by the Tasmanian-born Sean Byrne, in succession to The Loved Ones (2009), a high-school/torture-porn hybrid, and The Devil's Candy (2017), a US-set heavy-metal/haunted-house horror. On Queensland's Gold Coast, a pair of Canadian and English gap-year innocents arrive at a dock for 'Tuckers Experience' (cage-diving with sharks). Tucker turns out to be massive, matey Jai Courtney (Captain Boomerang in Suicide Squad). Soon they're setting off to sea, despite Tucker having asked them, 'So no one even knows you're here then?' – often a warning sign. En route, Tucker tells them how he was bitten by a great white when he was seven, showing them a gruesome scar. 'It's not the shark's fault,' he says. Then he helps them get their nerve up for the dive via 'an ancient relaxation practice', breathing followed by his rendition of the world's worst earworm: 'Baby Shark, doo doo di doo…'. The dive goes fine; the sharks (genuinely filmed, not mechanical) are beautiful. What happens when they get back on deck, relieved and exhilarated, is not fine. Tucker, we discover, likes to feed his victims to the sharks, dangling them from a giant boom, while he videotapes the show. More his fault than the sharks', really. Then we meet our heroes, fiercely independent, nomadic and beautiful American surfer Zephyr (Hassie Harrison) and stunningly handsome and good-natured local guy Moses (Josh Heuston). They bond over Creedence Clearwater Revival and Point Break and spend the night together. But when Zephyr goes surfing at dawn, Tucker, a tireless predator, captures her and she wakes, bound, in the bowels of his boat. Fortunately, Moses starts looking for her… Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Jai Courtney is superb as a kind of satanic version of Steve Irwin, jocular, sententious and insane. He even performs a psychotic, drunken dance, just like Jame Gumb's in The Silence of the Lambs. He's delighted to discover that Zephyr is a fighter. 'I love fighters,' he says. Dangerous Animals develops into an efficient survival thriller at sea, the action properly staged rather than relying entirely on fast edits and jump cuts, even though there are a few too many fake-outs, escapes and recaptures. It's no match for Thomas Harris's vision of universal predation ('His own modest predations paled beside those of God, who is in irony matchless, and in wanton malice beyond measure,' Hannibal Lecter believes). But Dangerous Animals is a handy updating of Wolf Creek, that warning to Brits not to trust characterful Aussies. Shark films have always had the proviso that there's nothing to worry about if you avoid the water. Aussie horrors like these might leave you thinking much the same about that entire continent. 'Dangerous Animals' is in cinemas now [See also: Wes Anderson's sense of an ending] Related